Articles in the Professional Skills Category

A few years ago I took some leadership training and during the training it was suggested we get mentors. I asked someone who was in a higher position than I was and who I respected a lot. She told me she had too much on her plate. Luckily, I found someone else, who recommended a few books to me and we were able to meet a few times. In the end, I didn’t keep up with it and it fell off.

Lately I feel like I need guidance and inspiration. I do read books on my own about leadership, but I am not clear on where I want to go at this point and have been feeling a little uninspired. I need some help guiding my career, so I decided to do some research on how to find a mentor again.

There is no question that effective communication is critical to the success of any organization. For years, companies have been training people on how to deliver engaging, clear, and concise presentations to communicate important business information internally and to customers. As more and more communication becomes conducted virtually, new skills and knowledge are required to ensure employees can be as equally effective when technology is involved. Virtual presenters need to be able to develop the right message, use technology properly, and keep their audience engaged.

I have been at Global Knowledge about eight and a half years and have had eight different roles. Which made me think, “Why have I been able to change jobs so often?” To begin with I am the type of person who likes to look at the big picture and understand what people do. How do things come together? How do the pieces fit? Who does what and why? I am a believer in collaboration so I try to meet with people to understand their role. Sometimes knowing who to go to for help is the most important thing in the process of trying to accomplish something.

To quote a famous frog, “It ain’t easy being green.” I see tons of advice blogs on the interwebs every spring on how new grads can ace that first job interview or snag that first job. What I’ve found lacking is some office guidance for the newbie on the payroll. So for all you recent grads who have already landed that first job, here are a few tips to help you hang on to it.

When I was growing up my mother had two sayings, “You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar” and “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.” Both made sense to me and to some degree I think both are true. Now that I am in the workforce and deal with people a lot, these come to mind more often. Recently something hit me, don’t these sayings contradict each other? So are they both true?

Compensation in terms of base salary varies significantly within the different levels of government. In the 2013 IT salary and skills study, we took a look at the different areas of IT personnel in the government and compared them to their peers across all industries. Here is what we found..

Respondents from the public sector, including federal, state, and local, accounted for twelve percent of the overall response for the United States and Canada (n = 1,423) with the United States being three out of four government respondents (n = 1,048). The responses ranged throughout the three government branches with 46% (federal) and 54% (state and local).

IT is a very fast changing industry – what is hot today maybe a tiny niche market in only a few years and vice versa. There are many new technologies on the way, and that means opportunities for those who watch the coming trends to prepare themselves early on and have the experience when demand picks up. There are many articles devoted to what is hot in the IT industry today, so we won’t rehash them here. Instead, we will focus on skills that are going away. If these skills are all you have, you may soon find yourself in an unemployment line. If these skills are the most recent ones you have, NOW is the time to update your skill set and prepare for the future.

This year’s top 10 skills that are going the way of the dinosaur (in no particular order) include the following.

One of LinkedIn’s greatest and possibly most underused features is its groups. Used in the correct way, LinkedIn groups can help you successfully reach almost any social media marketing goal, especially when it comes to networking.

LinkedIn limits users to 50 groups. I am a member of 50 groups, so I know a useful LinkedIn group when I’m in the middle of one. Anyone can join 50 LinkedIn groups, but doing so can be like having 100,000 Twitter followers. You can’t successfully be a part of that many conversations, so choose carefully.

Let’s face it, most of us don’t grow up dreaming of our future technology careers. It’s usually firefighters, police officers, and doctors that get all the glory. But as IT, technology, and digital media become some of the fastest growing job fields, we wanted to know more about the people in these industries and the different careers that they have found.

In our series “Crushworthy Tech Jobs,” we will learn the reality of these positions, what skills and experiences lead to each career, and what advice they have for others striving for the same success.

Let’s face it, most of us don’t grow up dreaming of our future technology careers. It’s usually firefighters, police officers, and doctors that get all the glory. But as IT, technology, and digital media become some of the fastest growing job fields, we wanted to know more about the people in these industries and the different careers that they have found.

In our series “Crushworthy Tech Jobs,” we will learn the reality of these positions, what skills and experiences lead to each career, and what advice they have for others striving for the same success.